Who doesn’t love pizza? It’s a wonderful vehicle for flavour of every kind and when it comes to toppings I really don’t think there are any particular limits. Where I think it really matters is the base. I like my base thin and crispy, sorry but I’m not a fan of deep pan, not for me.
To achieve a thin, crispy base you need a couple of things, a really hot oven (as hot as you can get it), so preheat it a good hour before you intend to start cooking so that not only is the air inside your oven super hot, the sides of the oven are also really warm. Whenever you open the oven door to put the pizza in and take them out you’ll lose oven temperature, so by having the walls of the oven up to a good temperature your oven will recover the lost temperature much faster.
I thoroughly recommend the use of semolina for dusting the pizza bases, it creates a great non-stick surface, adds flavour and gives it a real authentic feel. You can use a pizza stone, I use a baking sheet which works really well.
This recipe makes 4.
Ingredients
- 500g strong white bread flour
- 300ml tepid water
- 14g dried yeast (typically comes in 7g sachets)
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 tsp salt
- Flour for dusting
- Coarse semolina for dusting
Method
- Mix everything together. Some people do it in a particular order, I just tend to throw it all together and find that works. Bring it together with your hands until it comes together into a loose dough.
- Grab some flour and lightly dust a surface for kneading. If you’ve never kneaded bread dough before don’t worry, there’s a whole variety of techniques you can find online. The idea is to take the proteins in the flour, gliadin and glutenin, stretch them out to form strands of gluten. As the yeast grows and releases gas the gas will be caught between the gluten strands and expand. It’s really difficult to over-knead, but you’ll know when you get it right by using the windowpane method.
- Let it prove for 1-2 hours until it has doubled in size.
- Once it has risen, knock it back – this means pushing some of the air out of it. Divide the dough into four parts. Wrap them in clingfilm and put them in the fridge until you’re ready to use them. I recommend using them on the same day you make them.
- When you want to get cooking preheat your oven for its highest temperature
- Dust a surface with semolina, take your first portion of dough out of the fridge and roll it in the semolina. Use a rolling pin to stretch out the dough until it’s a couple of millimetres thin. When you pick it up don’t be afraid to let gravity stretch it a little further.
- Place it on your baking sheet/pizza stone. Add your toppings, and bake for 7-10 minutes depending how crispy you like your pizza.
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